On the spur of the moment, I decided to haul my ass downtown and check out the new Georgia Aquarium which is billed as the largest aquarium in the World, quite a bold statement for sure and it’s not often Atlanta can stake a claim to World’s biggest anything, Turner Field (World’s biggest HDTV screen) and Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (World’s busiest airport) aside, so it’s definately worth a visit for that alone…
Anyways, it’s claim to fame is it was built off of a $200m donation by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus (he builds a huge fishtank while Arthur Blank buys the Falcons, go figure) and, as previously mentioned, it’s the World’s largest aquarium, featuring over 100,000 specimens in tanks holding approximately 8 million US gallons of water.
Amongst those specimens are the stars of the show, the two Whale Sharks, Ralph and Norton. These are the first whale sharks that have been kept in captivity outside of Japan and they reside in a tank that holds 6 million US gallons.
OK, enough shilling, I was just planning to do a quick visit, mostly based on Scott Thigpen’s bad experience with the Aquarium management the night before, they apparently closed the doors at 4:30 (even though it was advertised as 6pm) stating “who would want to see an hour and 15 minutes of the Georgia Aquarium?” So after the super stringent security search and subsequent pat down (I must remember not to wear my knee brace when a metal detector is involved) and after I paid my $23 (OUCH!) I entered the building around 3:15pm.
Once inside you have 5 different sections you can visit, the Whale Shark tank is easily the most popular, and the most awesome… It has the transparent tunnel under the tank that offers a fantastic view as well as a huge viewing window on one side, after dashing around that, taking pictures as I went it was over to the next most popular section, the Beluga Whales… I did the same for most of the aquarium, dashing around, stopping to take pictures, ask some silly questions to the uber-friendly staff and move on the the next place. I didn’t do any detail as I plan on going back with Robyn to soak it up fully…
I checked my watch when I left, 3:53pm…
Who would want to see an hour and 15 minutes of the Georgia Aquarium?
I saw it all in 40 minutes, had I spent the extra half hour I would have had no reason to go back… That’s not a bad thing though, I do want to go back, and as I was on my own, I had no one holding me back or dragging me here, there and everywhere.
If you havent been already, I highly recommend it, but I do advise you go during the work day, the place was very quiet when I arrived which also aided my speedy tour.
Georgia Aquarium
Originally uploaded by FLC.
